Editorial | Political theater and rival players

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's appearances on Capitol Hill this week carried more than the weight of her delayed and anticipated testimony about her and her department's handling of the deadly attack last September on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

The attack took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. It underscored the dangers of diplomatic service in hot spots around the world, and vulnerabilities at least in Libya for those public servants. And it fueled American election-year conspiracy theories about what the Obama administration knew about the attackers and when they knew it.

The rancor even extended to Secretary Clinton's recent head injury. Critics accused her of faking a concussion in order to avoid testifying before Congress. That testimony finally occurred after she was hospitalized and treated for a blood clot in her head.

By the time she spoke on Wednesday before both Senate and House committees, one of her last such public appearances as secretary of State, there was much that was valedictory about the encounters, a last lap at home as the country's peripatetic proxy to the world. It was a master class in authority.

While Secretary Clinton spoke of enacting recommendations by the independent Accountability Review Board, which investigated the tragedy in Benghazi, there was a strong subtext to the hearings which had nothing to do with yesterday or today. It was all about tomorrow - specifically, the presidential prospects of several players in the room, including Secretary Clinton, who has not made her plans known.

Trying to gain traction in the 2016 sweepstakes, her critics accused her of growing emotional during the hearings about the deaths for politically expedient reasons.

During that testimony, Sen. Rand Paul, flirting with a presidential run of his own and once again dragging Kentucky into an unflattering spotlight, asserted he would have fired her had he been president. He also said Benghazi was "the greatest tragedy since 9/11." Tragic it was, but we don't know how thousands of American service men and women killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - wars, incidentally, conducted largely under his Republican party's watch, and started under false pretenses in Iraq - managed to slip his mind when he was looking for comparisons.

And the folks who were patient for years when it came to looking for Osama bin Laden, even abandoning the goal of catching him when it looked as if it would never happen? So impatient for answers, just days, weeks and months after Benghazi.

Across the aisle in this political theater, Secretary Clinton's fellow Democrats laid it on a little thick at times; one of them even brought up daughter Chelsea. Please.

In the end, Secretary Clinton accepted responsibility for the tragedy, answered many questions that seemed more about tagging her with something that would stick than searching for solutions, and showed America the grounded and nimble diplomat she had been for her country for the last four years - and the kind of candidate she might be in a few years, too.

But this week's testimony should not be the last word on the safety and security of America's diplomatic corps and outposts. If it were, that would be tragedy compounded.

Louisville, Kentucky • Southern Indiana

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Editorial | Political theater and rival players

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton?s appearances on Capitol Hill this week carried more than the weight of her delayed and anticipated testimony about her and her department?s handling of the